1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a tone generator, a performance information converting method, a performance information converting apparatus and a machine-readable medium of programs for use in an apparatus capable of producing musical sounds such as an electronic musical instrument, a personal computer and amusement equipment. More particularly, the invention relates to a tone generator, a performance information converting method, a performance information converting apparatus and a machine-readable medium suitable for use in emulating the sound of a ringing melody or the like to be sounded from a potable information terminal set.
2. Prior Art
Many portable telephones and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) can play a piece of music as a ringing or alarm tone (ringing melody). In many cases, the ringing melody is created by sequencer software on a personal computer, and is generally written in an SMF (Standard MIDI file). After the completion of music the creation of performance information for the ringing melody, the SMF file of the performance information is converted into a music format supported by a portable telephone or the like and transferred to the portable telephone concerned or the like.
Further, ringing-melody distribution service is so offered that a user of a portable telephone can access a ringing-melody distribution server, and after selecting a desired ringing melody, the user can download the same for use as the ringing tone. Since the server generally charges the user for downloading of the ringing melody from the distribution server, there have been proposals for systems and methods capable of listening to samples of some selected ringing melodies before the user purchases. In this case, the user can download only the ringing melody that the user likes as a result of listening without being charged. It has also been proposed that listening to the sample ringing melodies be performed on a personal computer. To be more specific, the distribution server pre-stores music data (for example, SMF) that can be reproduced on a personal computer so that a user can download to the user""s computer music data (SMF) corresponding to a ringing melody that the user selects for listening on the computer. Then, when the ringing melody is good, the user downloads the ringing melody from the distribution server.
However, reproduction of SMF files on a personal computer generally gives much better reproductive quality than that on a portable telephone, which makes it difficult for a user to have a proper evaluation of the ringing melody. Further, there are various types of tone generator chips mounted in portable telephones, and kinds of available timbres and the number of simultaneous sounded tones vary depending on the tone generator chip, which also makes it difficult to achieve a compatibility of music data.
Therefore, creation of a ringing melody for a portable telephone requires a user to transfer a certain amount of music data of the ringing melody to the target portable telephone, and listen to the same. Such an operation also needs to be done for each type of portable telephone. Thus the creation of performance information of a ringing melody becomes troublesome work.
It is assumed that the user accesses the ringing melody distribution service to listen to music data on user""s personal computer, and when purchasing the music data, the user downloads the same to the portable telephone. In this case, however, the user might lose his or her interest in using the downloaded melody as the ringing tone, because the ringing tone will probably be very different in impression from that the user has listen to on the personal computer. It is wasteful for the user to be charged for the unusable ringing melody.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems. It is an object of the invention to provide a tone generator capable of reproducing music data on a personal computer with tones close in quality to those of a ringing melody actually played on a portable telephone set. It is another object of the present invention to provide a performance converting method, a performance converting apparatus and a machine-readable medium, which make it easy to create the music data to be reproduced by the tone generator.
In one aspect of the invention, a method of converting performance information comprises the steps of receiving identification information that identifies an target tone generator different from an available tone generator, reading out first performance information that indicates a music performance in the form of a sequence of tones, and that includes timbre information specifying a timbre of the tones, and changing the timbre information included in the read first performance information based on the received identification information so as to generate second performance information including the changed timbre information adapted to the target tone generator, such that the available tone generator can process the second performance information to generate the sequence of tones having a timbre as if generated by the target tone generator.
In a preferred form, the step of reading reads out the first performance information including the timbre information that contains basic timbre information indicative of a basic timbre of the tones and variational timbre information indicative of a variation of the basic timbre, and wherein the step of changing changes the variational timbre information so as to adapt the variation of the basic timbre to the target tone generator.
In another aspect of the invention, an apparatus for converting performance information comprises a receiving section that receives identification information identifying an target tone generator different from an available tone generator, a reading section that reads out first performance information indicating a music performance in the form of a sequence of tones, and including timbre information specifying a timbre of the tones, and a converting section that changes the timbre information included in the read first performance information based on the received identification information so as to generate second performance information including the changed timbre information adapted to the target tone generator, such that the available tone generator can process the second performance information to generate the sequence of tones having a timbre as if generated by the target tone generator.
In another aspect of the invention, a medium is provided for use in a performance information converter having a processor. The medium contains program instructions executable by the processor for causing the performance information converter to carry out a process comprising the steps of receiving identification information that identifies an target tone generator different from an available tone generator, reading out first performance information that indicates a music performance in the form of a sequence of tones, and that includes timbre information specifying a timbre of the tones, and changing the timbre information included in the read first performance information based on the received identification information so as to generate second performance information including the changed timbre information adapted to the target tone generator, such that the available tone generator can process the second performance information to generate the sequence of tones having a timbre as if generated by the target tone generator.
In another aspect of the invention, a tone generator apparatus comprises a first bank memory that stores general timbre data representing a general timbre of a music tone generated by an acoustic instrument, a second bank memory that stores specific timbre data simulating a synthetic timbre of a music tone generated by an internal tone generator of a portable information terminal device, and a sound engine operative when the second bank memory is selected for generating a music tone having the synthetic timbre based on the specific timbre data stored in the selected second bank so as to emulate the internal tone generator of the portable information terminal device.
In a preferred form, the second bank memory stores the specific timbre data representing a plurality of synthetic timbres in corresponding to a plurality of model types of the portable information terminal device. Otherwise, the second bank memory stores the specific timbre data representing a plurality of synthetic timbres corresponding to a plurality of model types of a tone generating IC chip that can be selectable integrated as the internal tone generator into the portable information terminal device. Preferably, the tone generator apparatus further comprises a writeable bank memory that can be written with additional specific timbre data simulating another synthetic timbre, which can be generated by an internal tone generator of a portable information terminal device, but which is not stored in the second bank memory. Preferably, the writeable bank memory stores the additional specific timbre data, which is downloaded from an external data server.